ton-de-leeuw-music-of-the-twentieth-century

chapter six

Exoticism and Folklore

‘It is not sufficiently realised that Western music, after all, isbased on older forms that are identical with – or, at any rate,comparable to – those found today outside Europe and “Euro-pean” America.’

(Jaap Kunst)

1

A European goes to Japan to learn the art of archery. He desires to draw nearto the spiritual world of the East and believes that this celebrated practice ofarchery is a good way to begin, since he is already somewhat skilled in han-dling pistols and weapons. However, the first thing demanded by his masteris complete inadvertence. ‘The true art’, he exclaims, ‘is purposeless and inad-vertent. The more persistently you try to consciously aim the arrow in theright direction, the less you will succeed in approaching the essence of this art.You are obstructed by a will that is much too purposeful. That which you(yourself ) do not do – or so you believe at least – does not happen either.’

This story, told by Ernesto Grassi,1 offers us a glimpse of a different world,strange and for some perhaps absurd. For if we ponder on the words of thisEastern master, do we not encroach upon the fundament of our individual-ism? ‘Come away from yourself, from your subjective moments, from yourconsciousness, from your ego, and return to the original being’, is the trans-lation of his answer. ‘This self-oblivion conveys one to a condition fromwhich mankind attains a new spiritual freedom, a state of originality anddirectness which stands – and now a more familiar sound – at the beginningof all creative labour.’

This book aims to avoid any semblance of philosophy. The story is mere-ly an illustration of the chasm between two worlds, a chasm that no longerruns between East and West however, but across our own soil, cutting straightthrough our Western culture to cause fatal confusion. On the one hand arethe offspring and advocates of (German) romantic subjectivism, for whomthe subjective expression of the artist is in the foreground. His inner stride,his emotional tension, his moods and experiences make and determine thework of art. We see the type of composer who has his counterpart in the con-cert virtuoso: both are exponents of a personality cult carried to excess. Onthe other side of the cleft we see the artist as a person who, at the essential

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moment in the creative process, is ego-less, setting himself aside in order tosurpass himself. He is not spectacular, and he usually works in utter servitudeto a god, an ideal, or an employer.

Both concepts exist in our Western world, alongside one another andintermingled, in all sorts of gradations and with the emphasis on the first-mentioned. In the East the situation is the reverse. Nothing is more strikingthan to experience how an authentic Indian singer ‘gets going’. He sits downin what we would consider a rather awkward position. But he is never out toexploit or exhibit the vocal apparatus! To the endless zooming of drone stringshe concentrates on the raga that he is about to sing. He slowly explores thesteps of the scale, and as he proceeds he becomes increasingly free of himself,until he is finally swept along upon the magical stream of sound. The musiccan begin. The moment of will is secondary: the artist surrenders himself tobecome a voluntary and excellently trained medium in the service of music.Striking in this context, finally, is that the concept of ‘harmony’ crops upagain and again in Eastern reflections on art, where in the West we prefer tospeak of the passion, the tension and emotion of art. This goes for both com-posers and performers. The few artists who consciously pursue the first idealare therefore quickly branded as cold and insensitive. It is a deeply anchoredmisunderstanding left to us by the subjective-romantic view of the world.

The bowman transported us without transition into the world of the East,and the controversy thus evoked immediately went far beyond local differ-ences between East and West. We are concerned here with basic concepts andtendencies. But the question arises: why exoticism? Can we learn anythingfrom it, and if this is the case, is it necessary to do so?

First and foremost, let it be said that the question is entirely theoretical.Artists allow themselves to be influenced and stimulated without delving intosuch problems. But leaving this aside, the Western attitude to the East can bedivided roughly into two groups. On the one hand is a group very muchdetermined by fashion. From the chinoiserie of the fin-de-siècle to (Zen)Buddhist novelties of contemporary intellectuals, we are witness to a contin-uous but superficial contact with the East. Picturesque outward appearanceusually forms a substitute for the artist’s own personal concept. On the otherhand is a group that does accept the East as an autonomous world of its own,but as a world that is too far removed from our intellectual and cultural lifeto be able to influence it. Moreover, we are strong and vigorous enough – itis said – to guarantee an evolution of our own.

The latter view is undeniably healthier and more realistic, but probablyrequires qualification. A basic fact of our time is the increasing and nowunavoidable contact with every region of the world. This contact has long lostits narrow diplomatic and commercial character and expanded into a muchmore comprehensive amalgamation. We must bear in mind here that theprocess of acculturation (hybridisation), the fusion and adoption of elementsfrom different cultures, may be counted among the most familiar phenome-

118 music of the twentieth century


na of universal art history. Finally, it is not improbable that our own artreveals lines of evolution, free and from within, that in some respectsapproach certain Eastern concepts more closely than was ever possible with-in our former and closed cultural pattern.

2

In the above words ‘the East’ is a rather vague way of describing an abundanceof non-Western cultures. And in most cases we cannot pinpoint possibleinfluences, for it is usually more a question of general artistic (and aesthetic)concepts than of clearly defined technical resources. Yet from this pointonwards it is useful to make a distinction between the art of highly developedEastern cultures (the Arab, Indian and Chinese-Japanese worlds) and those ofmore or less primitive peoples. The latter art is of course highly variegatedtoo, but ‘primitivism’ as a general term is used so often in contemporaryWestern art that further investigation is well worthwhile.

The most vivid example of this primitivism remains Stravinsky’s The Rite.The newness of this score was to a considerable extent due to an extremelydirect approach to the phenomenon of music. All listeners have undergone –beyond its modern refinement – the primal force of this work. It has usuallybeen attributed to rhythm, but on further consideration this is only partiallytrue. We must venture on, and in so doing investigate the melodic aspect inparticular. The work proves to conceal many melodic features that – evenconsidered strictly in terms of material – display striking similarity with themelodic world of primitive peoples. Let us look more closely at this aspect byexamining a varied selection from the rich motivic material of The Rite:

example 69

exoticism and folklore 119


The following characteristics may be observed (Example 69): A number of motifs (A-F) moves entirely or principally around a nucleus

of three notes (see Example 22); F-L have no upbeat and move downwards;B, D, E and L comprise no more than two or three notes (see also Example25); the pendulous movement is conspicuous in A, B, D and L. Related tothis, but considered more broadly, one is struck by the many repetitions ofmotifs (ostinato) and the additive rhythm of most fragments.

What does this have to do with primitive melody? The shape of primitivemelody is pre-modal, i.e., it came into being without the influence of a notesystem. Musical consciousness was not yet aware of the octave as an interval,and still less of its subdivision. The only and exclusive material of suchmelody was the interval, which was usually not fixated: 3rds and 2nds couldvary in size. At this stage absolute intervals were not important – they (prob-ably) become so only with a consciousness of the octave and its subdivision.Perhaps we can imagine the melodic process as follows: primitive man sangand became absorbed by a particular note; interval by interval, with this noteas his sole point of reference, he felt his way through the outer space of music.We can presume two possibilities:

1. Recitative, in which the unsteady intervals of speech were fixated, andin which the inflextion of words soon brought about the addition of severaladjacent notes to a central note, or induced undulating movement between asmall group of notes;

2. The ‘call’, issuing from a peak of tension and gradually falling into relax-ation; this may have caused thetic descending motifs – a most elementaryform of energy release.

Details and nuances are not relevant in the context of this book; of interest tous among these numerous possibilities is the fairly frequent occurrence of acertain melodic nucleus comprising a combination of the major 2nd andminor 3rd. The lowest point of the call was naturally rather unstable, but it isassumed that the interval of a 4th soon brought more stability, and was sub-divided (by being filled in) into this relationship of 2nds and 3rds, and some-times into a tetrachord. Two melodies follow (my own transcriptions):

example 70



Ethnomusicologists emphasise that such small melodic nuclei may on noaccount be viewed as ‘incomplete’ pentatonic or other scales. They are entire-ly autonomous melodic forms, though as a framework they may indeed occurin more elevated musical structures of later date. The burial song quotedforms an example in the bud: the nucleus B-A-F is already extended to atetrachord by adding the subsidiary note G .

From the various shapes of these primitive melodic nuclei we have chosenthis particular one since it reminds us quite astonishingly of many of our chil-dren’s songs. Moreover, this same nucleus is found at the basis of the melod-ic structure of Debussy’s La Mer, and these same intervals (not fixated butfluctuating between major and minor) form the basic material of the firstmovement of Schönberg’s op. 11! Three works, all written around the sametime. Three works which each in their own way represent a different approachto musical material, and in their reaction to tonality revert not only to modalbut even pre-modal concepts, at a moment when the fixated division of theoctave in major and minor scales began to become a thing of the past, andmelody became released once more from vertical ties.

The characteristics of Stravinsky’s melodic style in particular, and to a cer-tain extent that of Debussy too (see chapter 3, section 3), are surprisingly sim-ilar to those of primitive melody: note nuclei, undulating movement,extremely few notes, thetic descending motifs, and motif repetition.Stravinsky unawares applied several important features of primitive melody.Unawares, for although contemporary painters could indulge themselves inprimitive images and masks, primitive music had not yet been heard inEurope. Only after World War II did leading gramophone companies over-come their traditional hesitation and devote attention to exotic as well asprimitive music.

One also speaks of primitivism with regard to Carl Orff. Comparison withStravinsky, however, is rather problematic. The latter remained first and fore-most a composer. In other words, the ever new problems that he encounteredwere tackled and solved in an essentially musical manner. Orff ’s developmentdrove him increasingly towards music drama in which music, text, dance andaction were viewed as a single unity. As a result his music is not autonomousand does not aim to be such: the musical element is just one component.Orff ’s music consciously ignored the entire heritage of musical achievementleft to us by the past.

The music of Orff is essentially monophonic: parallel movement and het-erophony merely create a very elementary form of simultaneity. But thismonophonic writing also rules out vertical-harmonic development. Ostinatostructures and an additive juxtaposition of separate segments complete thispicture and create a whole that is much more elementary than the music ofStravinsky. In chapter 2 we drew attention to Orff ’s rhythm, which despitethe relationship to that of Stravinsky, is considerably simpler.

Strictly speaking, it is therefore not fair to isolate the music of Carl Orff



from the dramatic entity and judge it on its purely musical merits. And Ibelieve that precisely here a similarity is to be found with not only primitivebut also more highly developed art forms. For there, too, music is entirelyfunctional, without any pretention whatsoever to be ‘beautiful’ or even ‘ugly’.Orff did not always go this far by any means. But he was more fond of thealmost physical, imploring monotony of a protracted ostinato than of itsmusical-aesthetic organisation. The same contempt for musical organisationalso enabled him to write the most crudely tonal pages, which came to standin an entirely different light, however, by reason of their radical working rela-tionship.

Whatever the case may be, through Carl Orff a completely new dimen-sion was added to Western music. It was not so much the elementary musi-cal material as the breaching of our aesthetic approach to music that evokedreminiscences of practices long past. Is it not striking that the author of theselarge-scale music dramas, such as Antigone and Oedipus, was also intensivelyoccupied with music for children?

3

Observations on primitivism in The Rite may raise the objection that Stra-vinsky’s source of inspiration was Russian folklore, so that he did indeed haveexamples of elementary melodic form. This is certainly true, but we cannotbe sufficiently aware of the fact that there is a world of difference betweenprimitive melody as described above and the average sort of folk music heardtoday around the world. One could almost compare this situation with thegeological layers of the earth: though a primitive ‘layer’ may occur inciden-tally in folk music, musical consciousness has now gained so many ‘layers’that direct resemblance is rare. Moreover, the structure of the average folkmusic of today is further developed than the cited motifs from The Rite!Naturally, Stravinsky also made eager use of Russian folklore as a source ofinspiration, but this brings us to another chapter concerning the influence ofnational folk music. Despite related traits a single example from The Riteillustrates how this melodic style, tinted by folklore, is developed much fur-ther: there is a clear modal framework, and the melodic structure is also moredeveloped.

example 71



Something similar is found in The Firebird, Petrushka, The Wedding (here,incidentally, the nucleus of major 2nd and minor 3rd again plays a majorrole!) and other works of the same years. We have even come to speak of a‘Russian’ period. The influence of folklore is not limited to melodic aspects.In a work like The Wedding it is even the question, whether one can actuallyspeak of influence. Is there not sooner mention of an inner relationship, atypically Russian trait in the dramatic concept of this work?

Roman Vlad comments: ‘This disquiet in the face of the twofold mysteryof life ending and life beginning is the most significant feature of TheWedding.’2 For here we see a Russian wedding in which the celebration is aritual, in which the participants are conscious in a typically Eastern mannerof the secret bond that binds the events of our lives. For precisely the samereasons we Westerners may be surprised to hear a lament and a wedding songfrom the Middle East, which in terms of character can scarcely be distin-guished from one another. The Wedding, more than the Russian ballets, is awork that betrays the real origins of Stravinsky.

Nonetheless it was precisely Stravinsky who – in a European context –provided the best example of assimilation. After 1920 his oeuvre, with a fewexceptions, was no longer influenced by folklore. He not only absorbed essen-tial features of (particularly) Latin culture, but was to remain once and for allone of its leading figures!

In the case of Bartók this was a different matter. Folklore was a springfrom which he was to quench his thirst throughout his life. Another contrastwith Stravinsky should be pointed out here: for the latter, folklore was justone aspect, one of the many that determined his life’s work. He never madea true study of it, due to a lack of genuine interest, and some commentatorsclaim that his Russian period should sooner be viewed as a process of com-pensation: a nostalgia for his fatherland, a transitional phase towards a defin-itive assimilation of the West.

For Bartók, on the other hand, folklore was always in his focus of interest.He even became one of the most prominent authorities in the field of ethno-musicology. Here the creative artist and the academic researcher were unitedin one person. The significance of his work has already been discussed inchapter 1, section 4. His attitude can be elucidated again with just one quo-tation: ‘Kodály and I wish to achieve a synthesis between East and West.Through our race and the geographical position of our country – the mostextreme point of the East and at the same time the bastion of the West – weare capable of pursuing this.’

This statement is radical and far-reaching. And in this respect Stravinskyand Bartók had something in common: in their confrontation with folkmusic, both penetrated to the very heart of the matter. The national-folkloricmovements of the nineteenth century set the first step, but in this field toothe actual breakthrough was brought about only in the twentieth century.

With regard to Bartók’s so-called Bulgarian rhythms, a few words should



be added to what has been said in chapter 2, section 6. In the years 1933-42the ethnomusicologist Yury Arbatsky made an extensive study of the music ofthe Balkans, and in so doing came upon the practice of tupan playing insouthern regions – on the borders of Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece. Thetupan is a large drum, beaten on two sides, and related in construction anduse to Turkish-Arab instruments. As in the East, the tupan too has great dif-ferentiation of sound, and the instrument is used entirely independently, evenin the customary combination with a shawm. It takes many years to masterit, and the same subtle interaction occurs between strict rules and freeimprovisation as in Arab and Indian music making.

The particular value of Arbatsky’s information lies in the fact that hisstudy of tupan rhythm was not only theoretical but also practical – he learntto play for three years with a master of the instrument. He distinguishesbetween two basic durations: and . This basic proportion is unknown inthe West, but for a correct approach to this rhythm it is necessary to havecomplete grasp of the 1:1 1/2 proportion. In other works, when combiningthese two values one must not think in terms of five quavers: but of two unequal units. Correspondingly, the notation should not be 5/8but (1+1 1/2)/4. All combinations are possible: our 3/4 time could therefore be:

etc. In the latter cases the triple bar is therefore asymmetricaland the rhythm ‘limps’: aksak rhythm. Once this basic value has been mas-tered, however, a subdivision in quavers and semiquavers can be made.

How does all this relate to Bartók’s Bulgarian rhythms? His notation is notalways consistent: in the Bulgarian dances from the Mikrokosmos he even givesboth notations. The third dance, for example, is written in 5/8 time, while histempo indication is = 80 (Example 72). The Scherzo from the Fifth StringQuartet (see Example 4) has something similar, but Bartók’s time signature is(4+2+3)/8 instead of 9/8. The notation of the fourth movement of his Musichas been discussed in relation to Example 8 in chapter 2.

example 72



On the basis of Arbatsky’s investigations a correct approach to performancewould seem to be the following: the Bulgarian rhythm quoted in Example 72is essentially bipartite: . The time unit 80 is clapped per bar and subse-quently subdivided into two equal values. The final step is to convert thissymmetrical division into an asymmetrical one: the second beat becomes a lit-tle longer and the first somewhat shorter, while the total remains M.M. 80.Instead of a rather tiresome additive sum of quavers, the buoyant, dancelikecharm of this asymmetrical rhythm is created.

We have delved somewhat deeper into several technical aspects of themusic of both Stravinsky and Bartók that are related to our subject, in orderto emphasise once more that there is a close relationship between the con-sciousness from which the composer works and the resources that heemploys. Naturally, this is primarily a question of mental assimilation, butboth composers demonstrate that precisely then striking ‘technical’ similari-ties may arise, despite mingling with quite different stylistic resources. Onlywhen the composer’s approach is superficial do folkloristic elements seem pic-turesque, a hardly significant varnish, as is the case with most music in thiscategory. The only exception is Manuel de Falla. Unfortunately, his most con-vincing work in this respect, El Retablo de Maese Pedro (1922), is little known.But it is only here that the hard and hot soil of Spain really bore fruit. Thelast traces of French-picturesque colours had disappeared. The composerbecame more ascetic and direct, while sparing colours and psalmodic-liturgi-cal lines unambiguously evoked the spirit of ancient Castile. There is perhapsno other work that so clearly reveals the bond between man and soil.

4

The first traces of Negro music in Europe – leaving aside Dvor̆ák, Debussyand Ravel – take us to the period around 1920. Stravinsky: The Soldier’s Tale(1918), Ragtime (1918), Piano Rag-Music (1919); Hindemith: Suite (1922),Kammermusik (1921); Milhaud: La Création du Monde (1923), Negro ballet;Krenek: jazz opera Johnny spielt auf (1926); Weill: Dreigroschenoper (1928).

La Création du Monde (see Example 12) stands out particularly in thisseries. The heterogeneous tonal palette and free polyphony, the syncopatedrhythm, and the melodic writing with its typical blue notes3 lend this workan unprecedented freshness and spontaneity. This same blue-note melodicstyle ossified later in the domain of ‘symphonic’ jazz, becoming a stereotypeformula from which only Gershwin’s melodic invention escaped.

For a moment it looked as though jazz was thus destined to play an impor-tant role in Western art music. But this did not occur: with the exception ofone or two stray pieces – Stravinsky’s Ebony Concerto (1945) – everyone wenttheir own way. The South American sounds eagerly absorbed by Milhaudaround 1920 fared likewise.

The wave of jazz that swept across Europe after World War I was not with-



out cause: the reaction to romanticism and the expansive drive of manyyoung expressionists found unexpected support in the new music fromAmerica. It can be seen as a stimulus, rather than an influence, through a par-allel stream. The fresh and carefree linearity of the early New Orleans stylewas an extraordinary fulfilment of the European desire for free counterpointand a lucid, heterogenous tonal palette; the spontaneous joy of jazz perform-ance was precisely what was sought as a reaction to overloaded romanticism.Finally, the rhythm of jazz – according to Karl Wörner a four-stroke enginewith syncopation – had the elementary effect likewise pursued in new artmusic. Jazz, itself a blended product of two cultures, with quite a differentbackground and attitude, proved to run briefly parallel with the ideals ofEuropean art music of the same period! We can conclude from this, above allthings, that something amounting to the ‘spirit of a time’ exists, which can beexpressed in all places and in the most different ways. In this context Berendt4

remarked that later developments in jazz likewise displayed parallel tenden-cies, be it somewhat overdue, through far-reaching austerity (from Cool Jazzonwards) and the decay of tonal elements such as closed melodic structures,harmonic cadence functions, etc. Was this a question of European influence?It is hardly possible to say. Modern jazz indeed attempted to integrate ele-ments of European music, but it is revealing that the results as such wereinsignificant. In this context a 5/4 bar in Brubeck may be something special,but in Bartók’s works of thirty years earlier, it was familiar and common. Tosay nothing of the monstrosity of ‘symphonic jazz’.

These unsuccessful attempts from both sides may give cause for astonish-ment. For there were many similarities in the resources employed. But afusion was unsuccessful, despite the fact that it was achieved between the twosuch different forefathers of jazz. The main reason for this can probably befound in improvisation. This most characteristic feature of jazz influences thenature and structure of the music down to the last details: quality of sound,swing, elementary form, all are related to it. And this is the very thing thatwas missing up until this point from European art music: here it was not themomentary experience of time of the individual player which was essential,but an edifice rising above the moment, fixated and tending towards absolutevalidity. Moreover, as Dave Brubeck once remarked, jazz is characterised by‘the freedom of the individual, without losing the feeling of togetherness’.

The aesthetic around 1920 gave occasion to a brief flirtation, but the twopartners were apparently not fitted for marriage. Meanwhile, time did notstand still. The present pursuance by the performer of greater freedom and amore essential contribution to the work of art, if ever achieved, will increasethe chances of a conciliation. Whatever the case may be, the secret longingfor one another’s qualities lives on.



5

Let us return to our original antithesis between East and West, but now on amore elevated level, since we will now involve all expressions of Eastern artmusic in our comparison. However different these may be, they all havesomething in common, namely music making based on melic-rhythmicmaterial, in which the vertical moment plays a secondary role. This doesindeed exist: in East Europe, Africa, South and East Asia and the Far East,simultaneity is known in various guises. But the step towards a primarily ver-tical oral phenomenon, taken by the West, has never occurred. Preciselythrough the absence of a highly developed simultaneity, the melodic andrhythmic element has flourished unprecedentedly in the East. Closely relatedis the concept of modality; although known to us, its essence escapes us. Formodality in Eastern art music is inseparable from a certain ethos. Music mak-ing takes the form of melodic patterns, possessing their own characterthrough a certain constellation of notes, and representing an ethic, emotion-al or other value. These patterns – called raga in India, patet on Java andmaqam in Arab countries – though based on a particular series of notes, arecharacterised just as much by technical elements including individual melod-ic curves, important notes, adequate ornamentation and sung parts. All ofthis together embodies the (recognisable) individuality of a raga, for instance.

By fixating these elements, beyond which the musician may not go, aclosed entity is created which may often seem monotonous to us Westerners.Upon closer listening, great rhythmic and melodic differentiation proves pos-sible within this framework, a differentiation brought about and driven byimprovisation. One of the problems of serial music, namely the correct pro-portion between fixated musical elements and the freedom of the player, isresolved in the East in an ideal manner. There melody steered by the playeroccurs, which by reason of its almost physical directness and autonomy isunknown in Western music. But this freedom never becomes anarchy. Themodal ethic is more than a subjective truth.

This was known among the ancient Greeks too: only in this perspectivecan we understand the astonishing statements that may give us an impressionof the power attributed by the Greeks to their modes.

After the Hellenic era, the West adopted this age-old and typically Easternmodal concept. And once again we are faced with a stupendous process ofacculturation. In the Middle Ages the inheritance of the Greeks, Byzantinesand Arabs was slowly but surely transformed into a typically Western cultur-al heritage. In so doing, ancient elements were lost, while new ones emergedfrom the crucible. What was lost was the modal ethic, and a fundamentalmisunderstanding quickly arose: the whole range of defined modal-ethicproperties became increasingly schematised until only the abstracted scales ofearlier melodic patterns remained. The concept of ‘mode’ therefore becameidentified with ‘note series’, which is what we learn to this very day. A furtherreduction process – and perhaps a typically rationalistic Western one – is seen



in the conversion of the medieval modes into our major and minor scales.Thereafter, equal temperament eliminated the last modal remnants byevening out the original subtle differences between the intervals.

How is modal music interpreted in the contemporary West? The first signsof renewed interest on a larger scale are found in the nineteenth century,when composers harked back to the Middle Ages or to modal remnants infolk music. Naturally, in both cases it was not possible to revive genuinemodality, and indeed this was not the aim. What interested most composerswas the picturesque, somewhat archaic or exotic tint with which their essen-tially tonal music could be enriched with new expressive means. Not until theextraordinarily sharp intuitive capacity of Debussy was a radical approachfirst made possible. At the beginning of this chapter the suprapersonal, time-less character of Eastern music was mentioned. We are now able to elucidatethis in the light of the modal ethic. In the raga and related manifestations,that which the music is to express is already largely determined by a priori fix-ated musical elements. The raga ‘does’ it, and the player merely mediates: histask is to convey, as it were, the immanent musical message as purely as pos-sible. The subjective element is entirely secondary. This by no means excludesthe individuality of the player! Confusion of the terms individuality and sub-jectivity has often led Debussy to be considered as a romantic. In fact, he –the hyperindividualist – was the first non-romantic by reason of his horror ofthe German-romantic cult of subjective expression. It is therefore under-standable that the gamelan enchanted him. At that point, however, and intechnical terms, it was almost out of the question that it would be incorpo-rated in his work. Javanese music, for example, has its own laws, which couldnot have been known to Debussy. But a ‘translation’ into the musical ele-ments at Debussy’s disposal is conceivable. Thus, a resemblance can be seenbetween the Javanese slendro-djawar scale and the whole-tone scale. Globallyspeaking, both have equal degrees and comprise five and six equal intervals,respectively:

example 74

The slendro scale, however, does feature subtle differences of interval, whileEuropeans rather tend to interpret slendro as a more familiar pentatonicseries. It can be assumed that Debussy was also subject to this oral deception.The whole-tone series also cropped up elsewhere in those days as the outcomeof strong chromatic alteration in late-romantic chord structure. SinceDebussy was also indebted to this, a comparison with slendro seems on thewhole to go a little too far (see, for instance, the String Quartet of 1893).

Nonetheless, later whole-tone passages can be found that escape late-



romantic technique, as again in Voiles (see Example 7). With a little ingenu-ity such passages can of course be explained in terms of functions, thoughonly by adopting a literal approach. In fact, the very absence of harmonicfunctionalism is the reason why we no longer experience the chords as being‘altered’: the sound has become autonomous. Here we penetrate to the veryheart of the matter. The decay of the classical rules of harmony was rathergeneral at the time. It could be said that functional harmony outgrew its ownstrength in the late romantic period. Debussy’s endeavour therefore corre-sponded to this situation. But the music of Richard Strauss, for example, canstill be explained in functional terms. And a little later the young Schönbergwas to exert all his strength to replace the dynamic-constructive principles ofthe classical tradition by other equivalent ones. Among his contemporariesDebussy was without any doubt the only composer who managed to escapethis. It was only he who desired but one function from a chord: that it should‘give pleasure’. Gone was the chord as a psychological means of expression, asa factor in harmonic tension. Gone too were charged architectures and strictdevelopment techniques. This is what Debussy desired, and this is what heindeed achieved in certain works. What a revelation gamelan music musthave been! The rarified etherealness of the Nocturnes (Nuages!) had not beenheard before in Europe. Debussy must have had one essential characteristic ofthis music in mind at all times, a characteristic which Jaap Kunst so striking-ly typified as: ‘she does not evolve, she is’.5

The pursuit of transparent, timeless music places Debussy in a position ofhis own. Eastern music could teach him a great deal. He was unaware of thefact that such music possesses laws of its own, but this was not of importanceto him either. On the contrary. Precisely because of ‘the other’, the unknown,he was able to yield entirely to the marvel of freely flourishing sound. It is notimprobable that this susceptibility drove him further than any of his con-temporaries. ‘I prefer a few notes from the flute of an Egyptian shepherd; heis part of the landscape, and hears harmonies that do not occur in your the-ory books.’6 In purely technical terms this implied the cessation of chordfunctions, the elimination of leading-note tension, and the avoidance ofgenetic form elements. But on the positive side it also implied the use of othertypes of melody, the application of pentatonism and hexatonism (independ-ently rather than as tonal-diatonic or chromatic derivatives – see chapter 7,section 1 on the whole-tone scale), and the chord as an autonomous phe-nomenon. And as to form, it implied a return to the elementary, which wasto become decisive for most modern composers.

6

Since Debussy the ‘neutralisation’ of the chord (also strongly evident in Voiles)has become a common phenomenon. The tone field (chapter 4, section 4) isan expression of this, and total chromaticism also tends towards the same.



Another possibility is to establish a new modality constituted by the West. Inthe latter case, involving Olivier Messiaen, we are concerned with a directinfluence from the East. Although tendencies towards total chromaticism aretypically Western, they approach general Eastern concepts more closely thanwould ever have been possible in our closed cultural pattern of the past, aswas mentioned in section 1. Let us consider both aspects – modality and totalchromaticism – from this viewpoint.

Olivier Messiaen’s fascination with modality was a much more real Easterninfluence than rhythm. In chapter 4 a survey of his modes and their structurewas given. Despite equal temperament and other limiting factors he was ableto create a modal characteristic, due to the typically closed structure of hismodes (similar constellations of notes that continually return). Each har-monic change is subject to this ‘material closeness’, giving rise to a truly stat-ic harmony: the choice and sequence of chords – within the framework of amode and viewed strictly harmonically – are entirely unimportant. A remark-able effect parallel to total chromaticism also arises: the horizontal and verti-cal aspects of music become equal. This is the same equality that gives rise toEastern heterophony. It can all be experienced by trying to improvise in oneof Messiaen’s modes. But again that mysterious balancing force is manifestthat keeps the musical components in equilibrium. Precisely through this har-monic fixation, forces are released for melody and rhythm. On this subject,too, enough has been said in the relevant chapters. Melody and particularlyrhythm are highly developed in Messiaen’s music. With regard to rhythm thecomposer himself pointed out two main sources: India and the Ars Nova.

Although the Indian origin of many of Messiaen’s rhythms cannot bedenied, we should nevertheless take it with a grain of salt. Firstly, the com-poser took his information from an Indian manuscript compiled many cen-turies ago and no longer reflecting present-day practice. Moreover, the rhyth-mic patterns from it that are still in use are not always characteristicallyIndian, but are known on a much wider scale. Here is an example: the rhythmviyaya (of which Messiaen is very fond because of its symmetrical form)is also known in Turkey, Greece and the Balkans. It is a familiar rhythmicmode which, if we include its variants, will be found in many other placestoo. Viyaya means conquest. Other poetic names are: vasanta (spring),gajalîla (the game of the elephant), and simhavikrâma (thestrength of the lion). Without establishing any particular association withthese titles, the composer indeed created a rhythmic technique not typical ofthe West by giving life and shape to abstract rhythmic formulas. He spoke ofpersonnages rythmiques, while his contemporaries, so engrossed in the materi-al, spoke of rhythmic cells or motifs. Viewed very generally, the (religious)symbolism in Messiaen’s music was not strange to Europe. In the baroqueand gothic periods we find echoes of this concept that go back to very earlytimes.

Let us consider total chromaticism in the same light. Our example is from



Structures by Boulez, which is discussed at length in chapter 8, section 3.Example 98 gives the beginning of this work, presented schematically:

figure 4

The horizontal lines indicate the number of series used in each segment. Inthe five segments shown here, 2, 4, 3, 1 and 6 successive series forms are there-fore employed simultaneously. There are thus 24, 48, 36, 12 and 72 notes,respectively, in each segment. These notes are further arranged in equal num-bers and distributed across all the registers. Each segment lasts eight to tenseconds. It is clear that there can no longer be any question here of harmon-ic-dynamic development, as a glance at the score will confirm. There is a sta-tistical density of chromaticism per segment, but within the boundaries ofeach segment an indifference occurs with regard to simultaneity. Via a com-pletely different path we thus encounter the same process of neutralisationcreated by the use of strictly closed modal series à la Messiaen. The sequenceof notes, viewed in terms of simultaneity, is unimportant. Forces are releasedfor other musical elements: in this sound environment they can be developedunrestrictedly, free of any vertical function. Clearly, the latter three sentencesgo for most Eastern art music, too. We are concerned here, mutatis mutandis,with a parallel development in the West. In terms of rhythm, the successionof segments is vaguely reminiscent of the Indian tala system. Each segmentlasts for 78 demisemiquavers (the sum of all note values in the durationseries), and they are constantly rearranged. The Indian tala system likewiseconsists of a sometimes large number of constant units, which may be ‘filledin’ differently in each period. But the comparison stops here. In Boulez thebeginning of each segment is a point of departure, from which the rhythmicseries unfold. In India the same point is a goal towards which the playerworks, and from which he jumps to the next one. Here, age-long training andwell-balanced improvisation lend Indian rhythm unmistakable superiority.

7

Then there is the question of timbre. Among the exotic collection of instru-ments, we may be especially struck by the often highly developed arsenal ofpercussion. In particular, the range of nuance in the drum section and thefunctional relation of these nuances to the rhythmic structure of the musicare matters that every contemporary composer has to deal with. We havecome a long way from kettledrum beats every eight bars.

Another fascinating sound from the East is the gamelan, and the idio-



phone group in general. Naturally, Western developments in recent centurieshave concentrated on the perfection of those instruments that enable directtransmission of expressive intentions. Vibrato on the strings, for example, hasfor many become an indispensable means of expression. ‘Senza vibrato’ isviewed as an exceptional and impersonal coloration. But the so-called ‘expres-sive’ tone of singers, wind players and pianists also has an illustrious history.For many players music making has become synonymous with the con-veyance of personal expression.

The sound of the gamelan has a quite different character, entirely in keep-ing with Eastern aesthetic concepts. And although this cannot be literallyemployed, combinations of Western instruments offer many possibilities inthis direction. The sound of The Wedding, for instance, has often been com-pared with the gamelan: four pianos, kettledrums, xylophone, bells, drums,cymbals, triangle and crotals. The instrumentation of this work occupiedStravinsky for a long time. It is perhaps enlightening that in one of the pre-liminary stages the scoring also included a pianola and a harmonium (bothdriven electrically), and two gypsy dulcimers. This interest in certain mechan-ical instruments corresponded to the reaction against romantic subjectivity.

The number of works with exotically tinted timbres thereafter graduallyincreased, particularly after World War II; relatively speaking, however, itremained small, and this was partly due to difficulties of performance.Messiaen’s Turangalîla-symphonie (1948) is an example. Beside the usual windand strings the following instruments contribute to the sound as a whole:glockenspiel, celesta, vibraphone, piano, Ondes Martenot, triangle, threetemple blocks, wood block, Turkish cymbals, suspended cymbals, a pair ofcymbals, Chinese cymbals, tam-tam, tambourine, maracas, tambourin deProvence, small drum, large drum and eight bells. Messiaen’s pupil Boulezalso made his fascination for such exotic sounds quite clear (Marteau sansMaître, Improvisations sur Mallarmé). Naturally, he employed them quiteautonomously, free of any exotic-pictorial effect.

This chapter concludes with several remarks made by the Japanese composerHidekazu Yoshida. Recent global developments have not left Japan unaffect-ed. The assimilative capacity of Japanese artists is astonishing and indeed goesso far that one may wonder whether it is not at the expense of their indige-nous culture. Yoshida firmly denied this, and it is difficult for outsiders tojudge. But it is interesting to see how Yoshida’s remarks run surprisingly par-allel with the line of thought sketched above, according to which exotic influ-ences felt in the West were viewed mainly as a general reaction to German-romantic subjectivism. After remarking that the present generation ofJapanese composers has a particular affinity with Debussy, Yoshida writes:‘Moreover, Debussy’s rather static harmony appeals to Japanese feeling muchmore than the strongly expressive dynamics of German classicism and roman-ticism.’7 Further on, he underlines what has been said several times above: ‘To



reveal and express outer impressions or emotions lies far from Japanese art...This is the reason why young Japanese dodecaphonists prefer Webern toSchönberg or Berg. Of course, I know that Webern’s music cannot simply bedescribed as abstract. But in comparison with Schönberg and Berg, it soundsmuch more restrained. And so we Japanese felt Webern’s music to be prima-rily particularly cool, concise and precise, which is why it enchanted andattracted us.’

It is food for thought that many years ago the musicologist Paul Collaeralready compared Webern’s music to Japanese art... Could it be that music,despite all local differences, can claim to be a universal language of humani-ty?



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